Niles Company

Last winter our apartment (under the property management of the Niles Company) experienced significant water damage, originated from the neighboring apartment’s burst pipe. This is a relatively common accident in Boston area, though was completely mishandled by Niles. Instead of acting promptly to restrict the damage, the property manager, Paul Tallen, paid no attention to urgency of the situation, was verbally abusive, dismissive, and did everything to avoid fixing the problem. In fact, our neighbor (whose apartment suffered the most damage) could not tolerate Paul’s abusive attitude and the utter lack of professionalism, and decided to fix his apartment himself, thus never initiating the master insurance claim.
In the following several days we called Paul numerous times, asking him to help fixing the urgent problem, with no response. Importantly, we had a newborn in the apartment, and struggling with an incapable and unresponsive property management was the last thing in our minds.
In 2 weeks, representatives from Puritan (a flood restoration company) entered our apartment without our authorization (or even our prior knowledge) and initiated the wall drying procedure. Since they started the work with a delay, the water damage spread, requiring significantly more work, including opening the wall. Puritan representatives told us that they were contracted by Niles to completely cover the entire restoration under the master insurance claim. In several days, Puritan left our apartment with a large hole in the wall (during a very cold winter), suggesting us to deal with Niles to complete the restoration. Since no insurance-​covered contracts were signed between Niles and Puritan, we had to complete the work ourselves, struggling with the new born in the flood-​damaged apartment. Paul Tallen was nowhere to be found.
After approx. 2 months, we received a bill for ~$ 2,000 from the Niles Company for the Puritan’s work that we never officially authorized, nor received any job-​done reports or bills from Puritan. Paul Tallen informed us that, since the extent of the restoration work on our apartment was below the deductable for master insurance coverage (under which Paul authorized Puritan to do the job), we had to pay for it. Wouldn’t it be illegal (perhaps, criminal?) to authorize a vendor to enter an apartment under an assumed coverage contract without the tenants’ consent, and then charge the tenants for the vendor’s work?! Interestingly, shortly after that incident, Niles doubled the deductable on the master insurance coverage.
We initially refused to pay the unauthorized bill, but Niles forced us to do so by refusing to provide the necessary condominium documents when we were selling the apartment. Surely, the Niles Company should not be in the business of property management! However, if they are your property managers, watch out!

Property managers are always frenemies … you need them, but you hate them at the same time and there is always a give and take regarding the fees.
Given this backdrop, Niles was a good property manager. To be honest, so much of Niles’ serve will depend on who is assigned to your building. We had John T. — who was great to work with and very good at his job.
All that said, while I’d recommend Niles there are a couple of things to improve upon:
— John’s back office support could use improvement. There is high turnover and often times our association found ourselves getting less than adequate back-​office support and inconsistent answers.
— It seems like their structure is that each property management takes ownership of a particular property — which is fine until the property manager takes a vacation. At that point only «emergency level services» are provided by other property managers who are filling in. While everyone deserves a vacation, if an association is paying for ²⁴⁄₇ coverage Niles should better coordinate support when the primary property manager is away.
Again, given the context of dealing with property managers, Niles (and John in particular) do a pretty good job.